The Alger excerpt as well as the tenement painting are connected because they both use tenements as a mean to conquering one, perhaps small, but one step of the American Dream. Once Dick committed himself to rising up in society, he knew that one of the first steps was to find a constant shelter, no matter how crude and primitive it may be. Because he is dressed as a gentleman, the woman of the house is extremely surprised that Dick would take a room that "looked worse than none." The tenement painting ties in because not only is Dick moving into a tenement, but because as the title suggests it is the "lone" tenement. It is lone because like Dick, many other American were taking the next step in the American Dream, and in this case leave tenements to rise up up to the next step. Symbolically, the steps which are refereed to in the Alger excerpt, and because of the time period multi-floor buildings were often tenements , these steps are also representative of slow but sure climb of each each step in the American Dream.
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